


Of Snowfall and Bad Whiskey

by merulanoir



Series: They Are Singing The Old Songs [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Daud is a whiskey snob, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22463752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merulanoir/pseuds/merulanoir
Summary: They should start talking about the bank job soon. She doesn’t like thinking about it, but Daud’s time is running out. She can’t imagine a world without him, but she also knows that the time when the Old Knife is no more is drawing ever closer.
Relationships: Daud & Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster
Series: They Are Singing The Old Songs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610503
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37





	Of Snowfall and Bad Whiskey

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Снегопад и дерьмовый виски](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25360600) by [Greenmusik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenmusik/pseuds/Greenmusik)



> Tumblr ficlet, because I'm having feelings about these two.

Daud likes to think he is mysterious and unknowable. The Knife of Dunwall, a master assassin, unmatched and wild.

Billie finds him on top of the Rudshore building. She knows her mentor withdraws there after big jobs. To reflect, Daud himself would probably say. To brood, Rulfio snorted when Billie first asked. Rulfio has been running with Daud longer than any of them, and there isn’t a trace of fear in him. Just respect, and fond annoyance when Daud sulks and broods because he’s prone to carrying everybody’s worries.

It is snowing. It rarely snows in Dunwall, but now the whole city is vanishing into a shroud of wet whiteness. Daud is leaning against a crumbling wall and smoking, and he doesn’t turn around when Billie steps closer. 

They killed a noble today. That in itself is nothing unusual, the nobility of Dunwall is always out for blood. No, today’s mark was from Serkonos. She was a close relative of Duke Abele, and oh, how that name made anger curl inside Billie’s chest. Daud took one look at her and agreed to take her along. His eyes said the rest.

 _If you can control yourself._ Daud is all about control.

“I found this,” Billie says. She tugs the bottle out of her coat pocket. It’s made of fat, dark glass. Inside the liquid sloshes. It smelled strong and fruity, when she sniffed it earlier.

Daud looks at the bottle and his mouth twitches into a wry smile. His waterlogged hair is hanging over his eyes, but he doesn’t seem to care about the wet snow.

“Bastillian whiskey is an insult to the spirit.”

The rush of disappointment is almost too strong to contain. Billie knows Daud is from Serkonos; she’d thought that maybe the liquor would bring back some good memories. She knows she shouldn’t idolize her mentor, she’s not a kid anymore, but Daud is so good at _everything_. Billie wants to…what? Be him? Know him? She has no clue.

Daud tugs the bottle from her slack grip. Snow is starting to stick to his hair now, no longer melting, and in the midst of the flurries he looks more like a ghost than a man made of flesh and steel.

“They distill it with peaches,” Daud says more quietly. He turns the bottle in his hands before pulling out the cork and taking a swig. Billie watches as his jaw tenses against the bite of the whiskey. When he offers the bottle to her, Billie accepts it and tips her face towards the falling snow to drink. Then she starts to cough, and Daud laughs and drops his soggy cigar into the snow.

Daud was right. It’s horribly bad whiskey.

***

It’s never really quiet in the Acantila Repair Station. The old buildings shift and groan as air pressure and sea eat through them. The tide comes and goes in steady rushes, the rats flicker at the edges of her vision and whisper secrets. The Dreadful Wale is dead in the water, and sometimes Billie imagines she can hear deep notes echoing against the hull.

It’s nonsense, she thinks. The Outsider didn’t replace her ears, after all.

Daud leans against her, and even after all these years his bulk is familiar. What is new is the way Billie has to help him climb the stairs up to the deck. His legs aren’t shaking, but there just isn’t strength in them any longer. His arm is a solid weight around her shoulders as they make it up step by step. They don’t need to talk.

Years earlier Billie would have felt uncomfortable with this. She would’ve found the evidence of weakness such as this damning, its unquestionable presence hot and suffocating; because she knew one day she might need help like this, but more because seeing Daud so weak would have shaken her whole world. Daud was a constant, a bedrock on which Billie had built herself.

Now it’s easier. The silence between them is almost gentle, as if both of them know that there aren’t any invariants. If even the Leviathan is changing, surely their mortal lives can too. Daud leans on Billie, and Billie is happy to hold his weight.

“Quite a place,” Daud remarks once he is seated comfortably. He flicks his gaze from the teetering warehouses to the surf and back. He no longer has trouble looking at the Eye or the Arm, and when he faces Billie he looks merely curious. 

“It serves,” Billie shrugs. They should start talking about the bank job soon. She doesn’t like thinking about it, but Daud’s time is running out. She can’t imagine a world without him, but she also knows that the time when the Old Knife is no more is drawing ever closer.

“You ever miss Dunwall?” she asks instead. 

Daud smiles, and the expression looks out of place on his battlefield of a face. In the past, he was more likely to smirk or scowl. 

“Sometimes,” he admits. “Not the place so much as the…past. Before.”

Billie nods. She understands because she misses that too. 

“Maybe the whiskey, if I had to name something particular,” Daud adds after a pause, eyes crinkling as his smile widens into a familiar grin. “Serkonos really ought to take a lesson or three on that.”

“Hang on.” Billie is on her feet before Daud can say anything. She jogs into her cabin and digs through the trunk she’d shoved into the corner. It’s full of stuff she doesn’t like to think about, a veritable metaphor for her whole life, but there, at the very bottom, is the parcel Rulfio sent her years ago. There was a letter, one that she burned when her anger was fresh and oozing, but the bottle is still there. She snags it and retrieves glasses from the mess.

“Remember when I brought you Bastillian whiskey that one time?” Billie says as she sits back down on the table and thumps the glasses on it. Daud’s eyes land on the bottle of Old Dunwall, and Billie smiles as they light up.

“Disgusting swill,” Daud nods. Billie thinks back to that unremarkable evening, thinks about how you could squint and imagine Daud’s hair is white because of the snow.

Billie pours three fingers for both of them. Daud accepts the glass with his Marked hand and steadies it with his right when a tremor runs through his arm, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes close as he smells the liquor, and that same new smile comes and goes.

Old Dunwall tastes like smoke and peat, with a lingering finish Billie can’t find a fancy name for. It tastes like snowfall and home and regrets.

Daud clinks the rim of his glass against hers. His eyes are tired and knowing, but he doesn’t look resigned. His strength is still there, transmuting into something new here in his final days, and Billie finds she is desperately glad she gets to be here with him.

She gave up on wanting to be like Daud long ago. Understanding him suits her better.


End file.
